


we'll turn their fangs into feathers and cures

by windupclock



Category: Fantastic Four (Comicverse), Spider-Man (Comicverse)
Genre: (very minimal but it does feature in johnny's nightmare), Body Horror, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Nightmares, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-03 01:14:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17274302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windupclock/pseuds/windupclock
Summary: Sleep doesn't always come easy when you're a traumatized superhero.





	we'll turn their fangs into feathers and cures

**Author's Note:**

> this is dedicated to jace! for prompting me and for being profoundly excellent.
> 
> title from careful hands by sleeping at last.

_Peter’s uncle is standing on the edge of a building._

_Peter screams, but it comes out silent. He looks down at his hands -- bare wrists, bare palms, no web shooters, no web. Nothing to pull Ben back. No way to save him. He tries to run, but his feet won’t move. He knows Ben is going to fall. He knows it’s going to be his fault._

_He tries to run, but his speed is gone. He’s useless now. He knows, instinctively, that if he tried to use his powers, they would be gone too. Washed away with the rain. No more sticking to the sides of buildings, soaring through the New York skyline, walking on walls as easily as floors. Gone. Just like that. He wouldn’t be strong enough to pull him back, anyway. He knows._

_“Uncle Ben!” he manages to scream. “Please!”_

_Uncle Ben turns toward Peter’s voice. His foot slips. He stumbles._

_As Peter lunges for him, his uncle falls off the side of the building._

_There is nothing Peter can do._

 

* * *

 

Peter wakes up in his bed. In his apartment. He clutches at the sheets around him, feeling the damp, cold patches of his sweat. His breath comes fast and heavy, an ache in his throat. He coughs. He wants to be relieved that it was a dream, but nothing comes. No reprieve. His uncle is still dead. It was still Peter’s fault. He let him die, he let him die, he could have helped, he could have saved him --

Before he knows it, he’s groping for his phone on his nightstand. He isn’t going to burden Aunt May with this, not when she suffered Ben’s loss worse than he did, not after how many times he woke up to the sound of her sobs in the middle of the night in those first few months. It’s been years, now, but he knows it hasn’t healed for her any more than it has for him. He isn’t going to remind her of that.

He presses a different number.

“... Webhead?” Johnny’s voice comes slow, gruff with sleep. “What’s goin’ on? ‘S it time to fight crime?”

Peter laughs, a little helpless. “No. Sorry. Nothing like that.”

“What’s up?” Johnny sounds a little clearer now, and worried. “D’you need something? I can be there in--”

“Just a nightmare.” Peter closes his eyes. “I know it’s stupid.”

“It’s not stupid, Pete. Trust me, dumb as your mug is, I’m not gonna ride you for havin’ feelings. We all got nightmares. You wanna talk about it?”

“It was my uncle,” Peter tells him. Johnny knows the story, has for a while. They were sitting in the usual place, close enough that their knees brushed, and they told each other everything. Peter’s parents, leaving in the middle of the night and never coming back. Uncle Ben. How Peter could have stopped it, how Peter could have saved him. Johnny’s parents, too, his mother’s death and his father’s anger. Sue stepping up, trying to be everything, trying to take care of him and ignoring herself. How everything fell apart after the trip, and then came back together. “He was… I watched him fall off the side of a building. I couldn’t save him, again.”

Johnny gives a concerned hum. “You know it wasn’t your fault, right?”

Peter sighs. “Yeah, Johnny. I know,” he lies.

“Well, that was unconvincing. Don’t quit your day job, Parker.” Johnny snorts. “Seriously, though, I know this is nothin’ new, but I just gotta -- it wasn’t your fault, Pete. That criminal made the choice to kill him, not you. You were just a kid.”

“I was old enough to know better, Johnny.”

“Spidey,” Johnny says, his tone stern, clearly modelled after Sue’s. “You were sixteen. I know you don’t believe this, but not everything that happens in the world is your fault.”

Peter chuckles. “Sure seems like it, ‘specially if you read the Daily Bugle. Didn’t you know I’m a menace who oughta be arrested for my vigilante terrorism?”

“Well, that’s a whole ‘nother ballpark. Don’t get me wrong, you oughta be arrested, but that’s for the crimes against fashion. Your uncle’s got nothin’ to do with it. And you aren’t a menace, Petey. You’re Spider-Man. You’re a hero.”

“Thanks, Johnny. That’s sweet.”

“You take that back!” Johnny says playfully. “Whatta ‘bout my reputation, huh? You can’t go around spreading that I’m some kinda softie. What’ll the gals think?”

“Y’know, in my experience, the gals tend to like the sensitive, thoughtful type. Might explain why you have such shit luck with women, actually, what with that empty head a’ yours. Real food for thought.”

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll just see ‘bout that empty head next time we meet face-to-face, won’t we, Spidey?” Johnny grouses.

Peter grins. His breathing has evened out, and his chest isn’t as tight anymore. “Guess we will, Torchy.”

 

* * *

 

_Johnny wakes up to the bugs._

_He remembers dying. In uneasy detail, distorted by the darkness of the Negative Zone, but he remembers. He remembers what it feels like. Being ripped apart. Knowing he can’t hold on. Having to let go. The darkness._

_Waking up._

_Coming back to life hurt more._

_He wakes up and knows everything in between has been a mirage. False hope. There is nothing except for dying, except for the bugs. He did not win. He did not leave. He is back here, and he will always be here. The bugs will remake him again, as many times as he loses, and he does not have a choice._

_Being reknit. Tendon by tendon. Muscle fibers woven together, his skin sewn back. They don’t care about precision, about beauty. He only has to be functional. Strong enough to do it over again the next day. It doesn’t matter if they put him back together wrong. It doesn’t matter how he cries, how he screams, how he begs for mercy._

_They are on him. Crawling. Consuming._

_One of them nears his face, its pincers extended, reaching for his eye, and --_

 

* * *

 

Johnny wakes up screaming.

He can’t form words, only sounds. His throat is raw and rough, like something is bleeding, broken inside of him. He pants for air, but he can’t find enough -- he’s burning, his fire consuming his oxygen, his lungs empty and dry --

His phone rings.

“Johnny?” Peter says from the other end. “Are you okay?”

“I - I -” Johnny stammers. His words won’t come. Still too short of breath. He feels the phantom pain of being torn apart and put back together, of having his flame extinguished, of a thousand feet and feelers on him, repairing and remaking and rendering flesh.

“I’ll take that as a no,” Peter says softly. “My spidey sense was going off. Are you in danger?”

“No,” Johnny forces out.

“Bad dream?”

“Back in --” He breaks off. Saying the name would make it real.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not sure if I can. Um. Not sure if I want to.” Johnny closes his eyes slowly, breathes in and out the way his therapist taught him. “I just --”

“Yeah. You aren’t okay. Been there, done that. Got the T-shirt.”

Johnny manages a laugh. “There a club to join?”

“‘Course. Card-carrying member, right here. Five bucks a month for dues, plus rotating snacks duty.”

“What are you bringing when it’s your turn?”

“I was thinking those packets of fried ants? You know, that you can buy on Amazon? Great source of protein.”

“Aren’t you an insect? Isn’t that, like, against your code?”

Peter’s laugh is soft and dry over the phone. “I’m an _arachnid_ , hothead, not an insect. When are you ever gonna get that straight? Different genera entirely. Not even similar.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Johnny drawls. “Can you ever forgive me?”

“I just don’t think I’m there yet, buddy. I think I’m gonna need some space. A couple of months at the most, really. Just to, you know, figure myself out, live my truth, and all that.”

Johnny laughs, and they both fall silent. “You know, dying fucking sucks,” he says after a moment. “There’s nothing else for it. It just sucks ass. And coming back after -- it’s worse. Somehow. A thousand times worse. I -- I thought it was hell, that first time, you know? And I don’t even believe in that shit. When I realized I was alive again, all… the only thing I wanted to do was die. For good. So it would be over. But I knew even if I did, even if I lost on purpose… it’s not like it would have ended. And when I dream about it… it just feels like nothing that’s happened since has mattered. I’m back, and it’s never gonna end.”

“It did end,” Peter reminds him. “You ended it, Johnny. No dream is gonna change that.”

“Yeah.”

They sit in silence for a while. Johnny follows the sound of Peter’s breathing, muffled but still audible through his phone’s speakers. Now, in his bedroom with Peter in his ear and New York around him, his dream feels like a dream rather than a reality. This is what’s real -- Johnny and Peter and the city in between. No dream is going to change it.

 

* * *

 

Peter twitches when he’s having a nightmare.

Johnny figures that out by the end of the first week of them regularly sharing a bed, because they both have nightmares every other night -- it’s practically a rotating schedule, like at least their brains are being polite enough to take turns. They vary in intensity, but it’s rare that either of them has a night of smooth, uninterrupted sleep. In his nightmares, Peter is quieter, stealthier, and Johnny doesn’t know if it’s another hand-me-down from the spider or just how Peter is, but he doesn’t cry or shout or anything. Just lays there and twitches miserably.

Unlike Johnny, Peter doesn’t mind being woken up from nightmares. It terrifies Johnny, leaves him shaking and off for the better part of an hour, but Peter registers everything faster, settles back into the world with only a blink.

Johnny strokes a hand over Peter’s forehead, brushing his curls back, and then pokes him in the stomach. Peter starts awake without moving, just his eyelids flicking open, which will never not be creepy to Johnny. “I-” he starts, and then frowns. “Sorry. Did I wake you up?”

“I don’t think you could wake a fly up, Petey. Were you having a nightmare?”

Peter nods with a grimace. “Green Goblin,” he says. “Ugly bastard. I think he was drowning me.”

“That’s ridiculous. You know how to swim.”

“Johnny, just ‘cuz someone knows how to swim doesn’t mean they can’t drown,” Peter starts, and then he catches Johnny’s grin and groans. “Have I ever told you how you’re the worst, Torchy?”

“Just wait,” Johnny says brightly. “I have a great bit about how spiders are insects I'm savin' for later. You’re going to love it.”

“I hate you,” Peter informs him. He rolls over, pressing his face into his pillow. “I don’t think I’m goin’ back to sleep,” he says, muffled by the cushion. “You wanna join me for patrolling?”

“Ugh,” Johnny says. “The sun isn’t even up, Pete. You’re killing me.”

“Good.” Peter nudges Johnny’s ankle with his foot. “C’mon. Suit up, pretty boy. Let’s go out on the town.”

“You’re the worst,” Johnny says, but he follows Peter to the closet anyway.


End file.
